Following A Lion Hunt - 02:09 pm
09 Mar 2010
Early this morning, whilst making our coffee, we heard the distinct noise of distant lion (Panthera leo) calls. They appeared to be coming from the western side of Third Bridge, over on Mboma island. numerous buffalo (Syncerus caffer) tracks have been seen in this area so we decided to spend the day trawling for signs of activity.
We headed out to find the huge herd of buffalo that is currently grazing this area, hoping that where you find prey species, you will also find predators. After an hour of searching we started to get a little despondent at the lack of buffalo activity. Then, much to our surprise we rounded a corner right into a pair of sleeping male lions.
We didn’t recognise these males but they looked like they were quite young and had probably been kicked out of their pride very recently. We stayed close to them as they snoozed their way through the midday heat. With us spending many hot hours staring at the trees waiting for some action.
As the afternoon wore on we started to pick up the sound of buffalo in the distance. As the noise of their calling got louder the lions suddenly rose and started to stalk off into the mopane....This had real potential to get interesting!
The buffalo were still a way off so we decided to get ahead of the Lions and try to anticipate their movements. The dense mopane in the area had really muffled the buffalo calls and we were surprised to find them only a few hundred meters away.
We sat with bated breath waiting for a site of the stalking lions. They appeared on our left, only about twenty metres away from the resting herd. As they slowly stalked closer and closer it become very apparent that they were masters of manoeuvring between cover, always taking great care to be hidden from the buffalo.
As the distance between predator and prey closed, the tension mounted. I was convinced that the lions were going to make their move at any minute but the buffalo must have sensed their presence and suddenly started to amble off out of the Mopane and onto the nearby floodplain. The lions did not give chase and seemed fairly unbothered by the outcome...This was going to turn out to be a real waiting game.
We stuck with the lions through the mopane and noticed that they were showing great interest in one of the trees that the buffalo had been resting under. As we got closer we could see them licking the ground and it became clear that one of the buffalo cows had quietly given birth whilst we were watching them and the lions were now eating the afterbirth.
The presence of a newborn calf among the herd would surely excite the lions so we decided to get out into the open and try to stick with the buffalo as that is where the action would happen. However, ‘en route’ the filming truck started to make some very strange, hot smells. This was not Brad’s dinner reoccurring but the car overheating. After poking around under the bonnet we found the problem. A piece of mopane had completely severed the pipe carrying water from the bottom of the radiator so we had lost all our coolant. Thirty minutes of bush mechanic magic and Brad had managed to fix it with a couple of pipe clamps and a piece of hosing we found lying around in the back of the truck. Five litres of water later we had managed to refill the radiator and were back on our way to the buffalo.
The buffalo had moved out onto the open plain so we set ourselves up towards the back of the herd and waited for the action to happen.
As the buffalo moved over the plain it quickly became apparent that the lions were nowhere to be seen. They had obviously either lost interest or had found another prey species to target whilst moving through the dense mopane.
People often perceive lions as being the “king of the jungle” or the “ultimate predator”. The fact of the matter is that very few lion hunts actually end with a kill. Although frustrating, today really demonstrated this fact to me as we saw the lions within a few metres of their perfect prey species - with no attempt at a kill. After a long uneventful day, the only thing left to do was kick back and watch the beautiful African sunset.
- Chris Harries
<< Previous entry | Next entry >>
Comments
2 posted at 05:26pm on 15 March, 2010 by Bernard Mach
Thank you for calling us for the two male lions on March 9th.
Sorry to hear about your water leak problem ! Must have occured just after we left.
Have sent a few pictures by e-mail at the earth-touch adress.
Good luck from snowy Switzerland !
Bernard
1 posted at 05:38pm on 09 March, 2010 by DIANE MILLER
i love reading your entires and looking at your beautiful photo’s…